Muving Thoughts
by dblauvelt
Summary: The Ancient Land of Mu and Thermo Nukes; The Continuing Adventures of Rory Cottrell, Geologist.
1. Default Chapter

Scullylay swathed in mud.

Her torso and legs had already been sucked into the gray green guck. Her hair was plastered against her cheeks. Her mouth hung open; clay filled the cracks between her teeth.

As she stared up at the triangular pattern of lights above her, her only thoughts were of him.

He had known, but he hadn't told her.

Her nose started to bleed.

It didn't hurt.

Her face was pressed further into the slime by the sheer weight of the thing above her.

He had lied to her.

The sound of the rushing wind was so loud that she couldn't hear herself yelling.

Lied. That hurt. Hurt more than it should.

The ship released its payload.

Her irises dilated slightly in the misty red light, creating spiraling fractal patterns on her retina.

The chute of a small object bloomed as it drifted to the ground.

He had known, but he had gone anyway.

The thermonuclear warhead fell slowly out of the sky.

One thought:

Mulder you are really going to pay for this one.

As it hit the mud by her face the bomb casing made a horrible _squelching_ sound.


	2. Back a bit

**_Petting Zoo_**

**_Washington DC_**

Two beady eyes stared at the huge red furry thing above it, daring it to out-stare him. He shifted back and forth across the cage, sniffing hopefully for the food that would sometimes miraculously appear without warning.

"I once saw a man fit seven live ferrets down his trousers."

"Really. How many ferrets can you fit down your pants Mulder?"

"Depends on the weather."

Scully looked up from the cage in which the little animals darted around. One golden yellow guy sniffed cautiously at Mulder's outstretched finger.

"What are you doing here?" Scully fed Buster a small treat. "It's not like you to attend charity events. And, since you didn't call me on the cell, I can safely assume one of three things. Let me guess, either a) something horrible has happened and we're leaving, b) something horrible has happened and you're leaving to do something incredibly stupid, or c) something horrible has happened and you're not telling me everything."

"Scully, you know more about me than anyone I've ever known. You know everything about me. Well, except maybe the Scissors Incident."

Scully cast him a quizzical stare.

"Did you know that fifty percent of all ferret deaths are due to mechanical parts in reclining chairs?" asked Mulder looking up from a pamphlet he was examining.

Scully gave him The Look.

"OK," Mulder, tossing the brochure back on the counter what do you know about the Land of Mu?"

Scully sighed a weary drawn out and melodramatic sigh. She turned back to stroke Bailey on her head.

"No really, Scully, I'm serious."

"Mu: Ancient lost land that is the counterpart of Atlantis but in the Pacific. Supposedly was destroyed or sank by disaster," she droned, slightly bored.

"Ancient South Amerindian legends give many accounts of the land."

Scully picked up Brewster by the scruff of his neck and dangled the ferret in front of Mulder's face. "All of those accounts were forged by some lunatic in the eighteenth century. All records and folklore were conveniently destroyed by the Spanish missionaries. It doesn't exist Mulder, so drop it."

Brewster dangled placidly, letting Scully rub his tummy, and yawned.

"Scully, Mrs. Fitzroy wrote me another letter the other day. I got it this morning. She claims that her unborn son's father was a man from Mu."

"Mulder, if we investigated every story from Mrs. Fitzroy, that would be half of our cases. She makes something new up every week! She watches way too much television."

"She was found this morning in her home in Ohio. She was shot in the back of the head. She was six months pregnant."

Scully, very slowly, put Brewster back in the cage.

"There's more Scully," Mulder went on. "A neighbor heard the shots and saw a man leaving her house. His description matches that of Krychek."


	3. Tape Decks and Sun Block

All across the desert lands and the canyon lands of the West, birds reclaimed the sky. Grouse, hawks, and eagles took flight, free to fly the skies unmolested.

Two owls soared across the night sky, the ground a blur, stars whirling. They swooped down through a sandstone arch and alighted upon an outcrop. They scanned the ground in search of mice, and for once, all the lights in the sky remained motionless and silent.

* * *

There was nothing to do except wait. To wait on the off-chance that someone might find Krychek. The airports and border patrols had been alerted. But he was one man among millions. How closely do you scan every passing face each day? He could be anywhere.

Except Mulder knew where Krychek was. And it bothered him. Hence that night, if you drove past his apartment, you might notice that a panel of his window had an X marked with masking tape, backlit with a 85 watt bulb.

Early in the morning, in answer to his signal for help, a packet was slipped under his door.

Except five hours before, a different packet had been slipped under his door.

* * *

Scully unlocked the door to Mulder's apartment. She ignored the magazines and bizarre video collection that was scattered around the place. She checked the phones, the TV, the plants, the bed, all of the furniture, even the refrigerator. Nothing.

The message on the answering machine was simple. Please watch out for crawlies.

But there were no bugs, and it was Friday afternoon and she wanted to go home.

It was as she was walking back to her car that she saw a blue car with tinted windows pull off too quickly when she got near it.

She stared after it, but it didn't have any plates, so she unlocked her car and started it up. She popped a tape in the deck marked NIN when Mulder said,

"Scully, I've gone to find the Land of Mu."

She nearly jumped out of her seat when she heard his voice, but fortunately the car roof prevented her.

As she clutched her head in agony, she could make out his voice continue as he kept talking through the tape.

"I think its somewhere in Sonora Mexico. Mrs. Fitzgerald put a map in her letter. Scully, they know about my contact. They tried to slip me a fake envelope. If I'm not back by Monday tell Skinner where I've gone, he should be back from his conference by then."

The voice ended then.

Scully's swearing, however, ended several minutes afterwards.

* * *

**Sonora, Mexico **

The fox looked up at the sky. It had seen many strange things recently. The fox knew what was to come. If anyone thought to ask it. If they did, he knew better than to tell. There were many new smells in the air.

He licked his paws.

Change was coming.

With tassels dangling dangerously, the rented purple punch buggy with tassels dangling drove along the dusty desert roads. Mulder had arrived in Mexico


	4. Who are Mu?

The door opened as Skinner's secretary walked in and deposited a bulging batch of files into the IN tray. When it closed behind her, the room was no longer empty.

Scully emerged from behind a file cabinet and approached Skinner's desk.

It took forty seconds to find the file that she was looking for.

It took five minutes to read.

She read it three times to make sure that she understood it.

She darted for the door. She paused with her hand on the doorknob.

Her eyebrow slightly raised, she returned to Skinner's desk.

Agent Pendrell was waiting for Scully in hall

"Come on," Scully said as he trailed in her wake, "We're going to Mexico."

His jaw dropped.

Scully, misinterpreting completely, spared him a glance. "If you're that hungry we can stop and get some food first."

"What? It's Memorial weekend. And where are were going to get the money?"

"No worries," Scully let drift over her shoulder. In her hand she flashed a VISA Gold card: Skinner's.

* * *

Sonoran Desert, Mexico

The mesa towered over the surrounding desert like some medieval castle. It was over two hundred feet high and roughly a mile in circumference. The rock comprised the natural fortress were stained hues of pink, green and white: a layer cake of color.

It took Mulder almost an hour before he reached the crest of the bowl shaped valley. In the distance, he saw a figure. As he approached, the features resolved themselves into a woman bent over bits of pottery. She wore hiking boots, khaki shorts and a red t-shirt that read, "Evolve or Die" emblazoned across the chest.

"Are you searching for the lost land of Mu?" Mulder called to her.

As the woman stood, the sun flashed off of the rock hammer that had _R. Cottrell_ etched on the exposed head. Her eyes narrowed, her nostrils twitched slightly. "Are you some kind of idiot?"

"Agent Fox Mulder. FBI."

Her nose **_sniffed_**.

* * *

Scully and Agent Pendrell drove through the desert in a rented red Mercedes, top down.

"I refuse to ask again why we are here." Pendrell squinted in the bright sun.

"Relax, 'Mr. Skinner,' we're supposed to be on holiday remember?" Scully rubbed some lotion on her hands. "You should really put some of this on you know," she said to him.

He glanced back from the road and snorted at the offered sunblock. "No thanks. I've heard stories about the way you two work you know. Why is it that you two are the only ones in the whole department who never go in with back up?"

"Have you ever tried filling out a report requesting assistance to find the Lost Land of Mu?"

He glanced back over at her, then back to the road. His fists tightened around the steering wheel. "I hate field work."


	5. Rolling Rock

"The man at the last village said there was an archaeologist working up here." Mulder pocketed his badge.

"I think your Spanish needs a little work Mr. Mulder. I'm a geologist, not an archaeologist," said Dr. Cottrell, bending back down to examine her samples.

Mulder turned slowly around, his arms open. "Then this isn't the Lost Land of Mu?"

"How should I know?"

"But the remains of the city," he said gesturing to the pottery fragments.

"I think the term is 'village'," she said. "There was some tribe here before at some point. There's a well over there and a few midden piles. The mesa probably acted as a sort of castle. They would only have to have guarded the two narrow valleys. Perfect protection."

"What happened to them?"

"Could be anything, weather, no water, no food… like i said, not my thing."

"What exactly are you doing here?"

"Paleo-stratigraphy," said Rory as they walked towards the mesa's edge. "Mexican geology is not what it should be. I'm field checking a number of strata for salt diapirs. They trap oil," she explained. "Imogen was very helpful along with the oil companies in getting my grant pushed through pretty fast."

"You expect me to believe you? You just happen to be out at this location at this time and it's not a coincidence." Mulder followed her to her tent.

"Listen, " Rory took a long pull from her water bottle. "You take a grant when you can get it."

Inside her tent, papers were strewn about , mixed with clothes and junk food wrappers. "My partner Dave King left two days ago. I was gonna follow him tomorrow."

"If you're supposed to be a geologist, where's the keg?"

Rory turned towards him and looked over her round gold-rimmed glasses. "Reports of our drinking are greatly exaggerated. For some anyway… A few… OK, a couple of... I've never met them but I know they're out there. Somewhere," she finished lamely. She grabbed a hand-lens off of the card table and walked back outside to stand by the ledge. Mulder followed her outside.

"You didn't really come here looking for Mu did you?" Itw was more of a statement of fact than a question.

"Not really. Look," he began, "I'm trying to find a man. I've been tracking him from Washington DC. He's about 5'8"…"

"… With black hair, white skin, right?"

Mulder looked at her rather oddly.

"He's climbing down the slope," she said pointing.

Mulder began to run.

"Take the south gully; you can get down there before he does!" she called after him.

Sighing slightly, Rory turned back towards her tent.

* * *

He never said a word.

Mulder caught Krychek climbing down the cliff towards his land rover.

"All right climb down, slowly," called Mulder. He followed the man's movement with the barrel of his gun "I don't want to shoot you." He came closer. "You should know how much paper work that entails."

The man descended to the base and slipped, coming to a rest facing Mulder.

It wasn't Krychek.

Confused, Mulder hesitated. NotKrychek completed his downward motion, turning down into Mulder, reaching for the gun.

The dusty sand betrayed Mulder. It slipped and swam under his heel, sliding his weight to the left.

On impact, the gun went spiraling out of his hand.

As NotKrychek retrieved the gun, and as thunder rolled in from the west, Mulder reached for his back up pistol strapped to his ankle.

NotKrychek swung the gun round and up.

The gun he forgot the permit for when he got on the plane.

NotKrychek flicked off the safety.

The pistol he left at customs.

Clasped the trigger.

Mulder's hand clutched at empty air.

Pulled.

Ferrets.

NotKyrchek fell to the ground clutching his forehead as blood sprayed outwards. The sound of the sandstone slab impacting with NotKrychek's head was lost in Mulder's cry.

More fragments flew as the rock embedded itself in the surrounding scree.

He looked up to see Rory standing on the ledge of the talus pile, sixty feet above him.

"Boulder rolling," she called down to him. "The only really useful thing I learned at field camp."


	6. Strata Talk

Scully jumped out as the Mercedes pulled up to a halt beside Mulder's battered yellow bug. "Wait here, I wanna check that everything's OK."

"Wait a minute!" Pendrell called to her.

"You're not armed, just wait here!" she said running off towards the slopes.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Just, I don't know, park the car!"

* * *

"Ouch!"

"If you'd hold still this would be easier," Rory muttered as she swabbed his forehead with disinfectant.

"How long have you been here?" Mulder asked, looking around at the tent.

"About four weeks or so," she said, unwrapping a bandaid.

"You said you were leaving tomorrow. How long has it taken you to finish your work?" Mulder winced as she applied the bandage.

"For the oil company? Ohhh, I finished that the first five hours after we got here."

* * *

Pendrell reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the sunblock. He squeezed some into his palm and pressed it to his neck.

That was why Pendrell didn't see the man in the mirror.

But as he was knocked unconscious, he did feel the pain of the metal impacting his skull.

Briefly.

* * *

"I've been doing work for my post doc," Rory explained as she packed away the med kit. "I figured that I might as well since I was out here already."

"But do they know that you are still out here?" Mulder asked as he rifled through some of her folders.

"Uh, no I don't think so. I purchased the ticket myself, they just need the receipt. I sent in the report two weeks ago. Why?"

"I think we might be in big trouble," said Mulder gloomily.

Rory looked over at him. Saw the papers in his hand.

"I was just looking at your reports," he said sheepishly.

"I noticed," she said quietly.

"You have two sets of data. One has exactly the opposite readings of the others. Where this one is positive, that one is negative. They don't correlate."

Rory looked slightly embarrassed. "Heh-heh. The red one is a copy of the report I sent to the oil company. I changed the data slightly. Blame it on crossed wires. They won't be drilling for oil here."

"Isn't that a little unethical?"

"Depends on your point of view. What do you think about the pollution and rape of our planet?"

"I think," he said replacing the files, "that I like how you think. Won't it be tough for you to get a job after this?"

"I was just going to teach anyway, I don't need them again. They might need me, however."

Mulder chuckled slightly, then glanced at his watch. He cast about the tent, beginning to pace furiously. He spied her laptop on the card table.

"Can you pull up a model of this mesa?" he asked, pulling her towards the terminal.

"Ah, sure, I can pull up a cross-section," Rory switched on TROI, her laptop,and a screeching emerged from the computer. "Sorry," she mumbled as she reached for a toggle switch that cut off the Animaniacs theme song.

The screen pulled up a slice of the mesa showing the layer cake rock layers.

"Are there caves anywhere?" Mulder asked cautiously.

"Yeah, there's a layer of limestone. PIEVIH said there were a few caves down there."

"PIEVIH?"

She fiddled with the keyboard. "Oh, Dave. He pissed in every volcano in Hawaii, he wants to discover a brach species and name it after himself. There you go," she said as a number of spots dissolved in a yellow layer.

"I hope I'm not distracting you from your work, Professor," said Mulder as he watched the screen morph and blend.

She turned round to face him. "You have no idea who you're talking to, do you?"

"Shhh," said Mulder. "What was that?" he asked, pointing towards the top of the tent.

He reached over and plunged them into darkness.

* * *

Scully had almost circled the mesa and still hadn't found a way in.

What was worse, it was getting dark.

Then she found the body.


	7. Diving for Life

Rory lay with Mulder on the ground and watched the lights dance above them in the sky.

"You expect me to believe that USAF men are piloting alien space ships around my project area as part of a training exercise?"

"US pilots flying alien craft doing maneuvers, yes," replied Mulder, still awed by their flight.

Rory sucked on her bottom lip for a moment. "That's silly."

Two crafts dived towards them again, plummeting down from the sky with a fierce roar.

A trickle of blood slithered out of Mulder's nose.

Rory got her breath back after some hurried praying. "OK, sure. Pilots in alien ships. Works for me, why not," she said quickly. "But what does this have to do with the guy you were after?"

"He was a decoy, a lure to get me here; it wasn't him. How would you go about destroying those caves?" Mulder asked, still looking longingly up at the sky.

"Uhhh, well, I'd put mining charges in the cave or you could put concentrated acid in the groundwater, that might erode the limestone layer they are in. Not very practical though. I don't know."

"Anything you can think of. Anything at all. How would you do it? Thermonuclear weapon?"

"Bit messy, lots of radiation and they leave distinctive seismic traces. Hell, bollide impact, place explosives along pre-existing fault planes…"

"Say you were in enemy territory," began Mulder, "and you had to get in and out relatively quickly."

"Resonance," Rory blurted out.

"Resonance. How resonance?"

"Place a series of charges along the area, and detonate simultaneously!"

"Would it work to depth?"

"Well, soldiers have to break step before crossing bridges or else it would collapse. I have no idea how much explosives you need. Look you said you wanted ideas- tactical weapons isn't exactly my field," she paused. "You'd have to lay them pretty fast, though."

Mulder pointed silently to the sky.

She looked away suddenly. "The nerve!"

"What?"

"This is my field area. They might have killed me."Rory's nostrils flared in rage.

"You were supposed to leave two weeks ago, remember." Mulder said quietly.

"They needed my survey for what they were doing?"

"Imogen is probably a subsidiary of the government. That's how your grant got through so fast."

"So I'm working for them…"

"I'd assume so. It is all a little too convenient."

Rory looked back to the sky for a moment. "The nerve. They aren't getting this Brunton compass back that's for sure..."

"Look," Mulder said. "Get your stuff together and get out of here, now. Tonight."

"What will you be doing?" she asked, scrambling up after him.

"I'm gonna check out the caves. I'll meet you at the car in a hour."

* * *

Rory was stuffing her notebook and disks into a metal case when Scully staggered into the tent, her body covered in mud, gun held high.

"FBI. Where's Mulder?'

"Oh no," sighed Rory, "not Mu too."

"Where is he!"

"He went to check out the cave system, why?"

Scully paused before she flew out of the tent. "This is a testing ground for ground penetration weapons!"

Rory opened her mouth to explain that they already knew, that they had worked it out and had a few models of what might happen.

Then Scully said the words, "Nuclear weapons," and then it didn't seem all that important.

She followed Scully out of the tent.

"Wait," she cried. "He'll meet us by the cars, he's probably already there by now! Follow me!"

Rory led Scully to the edge of the cliff.

"We can't out run nuclear explosions!" protested Scully as Rory pressed two shoe-sized rocks into her hands. "What are you doing?"

"We can try. Hold these." Rory looked down at the eighty-foot high talus slope. She tossed the case over the edge. "Besides, it's more fun this way. I've been wanting to do this for four weeks."

"Do what?"

"Sit on your right foot and lay your left leg out in front of you," Rory said quickly as she squatted down. "Use the rocks in your hands to steer."

"You must be joking." Scully stared in dismay at the rocks scattered beneath the cliff below her.

"The important thing is to keep sitting on your foot. Other wise your spinal column will be renting space with your cerebellum."

And then Rory was gone.

Scully cursed several times and then pushed off down the slope after her.


	8. Muving On

"I don't know you, but somehow I feel like we're family."

The man turned slightly. "Agent Mulder, I didn't expect you here."

Mulder stood six paces behind Cancer man, his right hand holding the gun, leaning his left arm on a boulder. "Well, an unmarked BMW in the middle of the Mexican desert is a little conspicuous."

"You can put down the gun," he said, turning back to look at the early morning sky. "You don't need it."

"No probably not," Mulder said, slipping his gun into his holster. "Especially since your driver just had a rather nasty argument with the windshield."

C-man tapped some ash on the ground.

"It was a bit obvious, don't you think?"

"It got you there, or rather here."

"Sorry to disappoint you. But I'm still alive. What was it? Compression bomb? Nuclear weapons?"

"Would I be standing here watching if it was?"

"That's sacred land!" Mulder began, "Doesn't it bother you that you're destroying ancient burial grounds and villages? You could have tested somewhere else!"

Cancer man stepped down from the rock outcrop. "Frankly Mr. Mulder, you are beginning to irritate me. And unfortunately for you, you aren't where you should be."

"I'm afraid of heights."

"I don't think your friends share your sense of vertigo. Maybe the trap worked after all."

"Scully?" Alarmed, Mulder looked towards the mesa. "Whatever it is you're doing, stop it. Call it off now!"

"In an unprecedented agreement with Mexico we are able to use some of their land to test new ground penetration weapons to use against the chemical weapons factory in Iraq. It was merely unfortunate that two agents on holiday happened to be present."

"Looking like idiots searching for the lost land of Mu," finished Mulder. "I didn't come because I fell for the bait. I came because a friend of mine saved my life." He raised his gun. "And that's why you're going to call it off. Now."

"The charges are already laid," he said. "It's up to the pilots now," he gestured up into the lightening sky. He turned back towards Mulder. "You really care that much for a dirt bowl with a bunch of broken clay pots."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand. Let's just say I owed a shaman a favor."

C-man shook his head slightly, staring at Mulder. "Ah, here we are," he said as a light approached in the sky.

The Craft swept in low over the site once more. The explosives had been deployed within the specified time constraints, and now the test could be completed: by laying the primary charger.

The Craft pulled into its final run.

That was when Mulder and Cancer Man saw double.

The other ship came out of nowhere. It was twice the size and twice as fast. The lead Craft faded in a flare of light, and then there was only the Mother Craft.

Cancer Man's lung dart hung loosely from his bottom lip, adhering by the saliva. As the moisture evaporated, it fell, end over end to land in the dust at his feet, extinguished.

Mulder lowered his gun. "You know, I don't think someone else likes how you're using their ships."


	9. Talkback

Scully and Rory had to circle around the mesa after reaching the bottom to reach the vehicles. The moon was reaching towards its zenith and their hands had stopped bleeding by the time they came to their cars. Their tires were slashed.

Agent Pendrell was lying unconscious near the car. His clothes had been turned inside out.

A patch of white skin that looks like a hand print, still wet with sunblock glowed around his newly burnt skin.

Mulder's car was nowhere to be seen.

They sat around his body, waiting for Hotty to wake up.

"That's a nice butt there."

"The word is butte Mulder!" She spun around. "Where the hell have you been?"

Mulder looked down at Pendrell's body.

"You know he has a screen saver of you?" Mulder asked archly.

"What?"

* * *

Collision.

It was bound to happen. Rory could see that. It was building on the walk back to the Mulder's car. Scully's walk was full of stiff movements, every step sparked fire. Mulder's shoulders were slouched and resigned. Agent Pendrell hung back, staring up at the sky.

Who knew what was normal for these two? Perhaps staring into the abyss for to long may make you a monster, but it may also make you afraid of the ones who stand watching with you.

Rory wasn't sure if she was a minor player in their story or they minor players in hers. Sometimes it isn't good to be a minor character as they get killed off quickly in stories like these. But to be a main player doesn't mean you'll make it alive to the end unscarred.

Rory did know that she was not a permanent part of this team.

So, when it happened, Rory pulled up a rock and nibbled quietly on one of her Pop Tarts.

It happened when Scully stubbed her foot, again, on a hidden cactus. The needles slammed backwards into the plant; sap started to ooze out of the wound.

"Damn it Mulder, would you say something? Anything!"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. How about 'I'm sorry'?"

"I said thank you."

"Mulder," she spewed something from between her teeth. "When is it going to end?"

"End, end what?"

"This! Everything!" She turned away and looked off into the distance, hugging herself. "I want a life! I don't want to have to worry about my relatives- my pets getting killed! We're never going to know everything, let's just back off while we still can."

"That's exactly what they want us to think!

Don't you get it?"

"Get it? Mulder, listen. They have killed your father, my sister. They're dead. My dog is dead Mulder! And who knows, maybe they do have your sister," she paused. "But this isn't a war! People are dead because of us. People we don't even know. People die because we ask questions. Don't you see?"

"Don't you want to know the truth?" he asked. "**Because** of what they've put us through?"

"Did it ever occur to you that there are some things that we'll never know? Maybe that we don't want to know?"

"Like why there are air bubbles chicken McNuggets?"

"Stop it! Why can't you ever just answer me?"

Scully turned back to see Mulder staring at the ground, his shoes scuffing the sand lightly. She pressed further. "You know, lately, every time I go to perform an autopsy, I think to myself, what if you're next. What if you are lying on that slab. What if I have to cut you open to find out how they killed you?"

He had no answer.

"Too many people have died because of us," she said slowly. "I'm sick of it."

Fox looked up slowly, his eyes wide and staring despite the glare of the sand and sun.

Scully turned away slowly and spoke into wind.

"And the worst part is that today, you could have died, and I thought that I was too late."

Her words drifted back through the air towards him.

"I'm sorry."

"Look, Mulder. Either from now on you tell me everything, and I mean everything that you think and do or we're finished. Finished, do you hear me!"

He said it again, louder this time so that it carried above the wind.


	10. The End

**Mayfield Fete, Connecticut**

Scully fingered her cravat; it was uncomfortably tight. She sipped her champagne lazily, looking Mulder over from head to heel.

"I hope that you're enjoying this."

"Exquisitely," she said and tossed back most of her glass. "Well, almost. You still haven't explained the Scissors Incident."

"Scully…"

She waited, idly fingering the rim of her glass. Her cummerbund was beginning to slip.

Mozart drifted around them.

"Let's just say it involved a rather pretty Belgian air stewardess and during the re-growth period I couldn't walk comfortably for two weeks"

"Ouch."

"Satisfied?"

Scully nodded and slipped her empty glass on a tray. She only had to wait a few moments before one of the hovering waiters handed her a full glass.

"Do you often go to cross-dressing balls?"

"Only when you owe me Mulder. Big. Besides it's for charity." She looked across at him again. "Oh sweet charity. Relax Mulder, you look absolutely fabulous in taffeta. Although I'd stay away from the red mascara from now on. It simply isn't you."

"Thanks, I'll keep it in mind for the future," he muttered.

"You know, Mulder, the way that you walk in those heels, one might think you've done this kind of thing before."

"You're pushing it Scully."

"One more thing: your dress doesn't match those heels at all. Why on earth are they red? Mulder?

"Mulder?"


End file.
